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crankyspice writes "The federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed, in Columbia Pictures Industries v. Fung (docket no. 10-55946), the summary judgment and injunctions against Gary Fung and his IsoHunt (and 3d2k-it) websites, finding liability for secondary copyright infringement for the sites' users' BitTorrent (and eDonkey) file sharing, under the 'inducement' theory (set forth by the Supreme Court in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. v. Grokster Ltd., 545 U.S. 913 (2005)). The injunctions were left largely intact, with modifications required to make it more clear to the defendants what BitTorrent (etc) related activity they're enjoined from."Bloomberg has a short article on the case, too.

NEW ORLEANS - U.S. District Judge Robert F. Collins was convicted yesterday of scheming to split a $100,000 bribe from a drug smuggler, making him the first federal judge in the 200-year history of the judiciary to be found guilty of taking a bribe.

What exactly do you call the case of Clarance Thomas not recusing himself from the decision on the AFA? It may not be bribery, but you'd be hard pressed to argue that it was all honest or just. Or how about the case of the Kids for Cash scandal? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal ) Not a federal judge, I grant you, but still a judge. And that's just two examples off the top of my head. I don't think there's necessarily much direct bribery going on... but that's not the same thing as say

Your wasting your breath, people (geeks or otherwise) tend to project their own weak principles onto others. The rich tend to bitch about environment and consumer laws, file sharers bitch about IP laws, I bitch about laws forbidding me to smoke weed. Nobody likes the law when it disagrees with them. Many people rationalize that by claiming judges must be for sale because deep down they know money is the only thing that will tempt them to break their own principles.

NEW ORLEANS - U.S. District Judge Robert F. Collins was convicted yesterday of scheming to split a $100,000 bribe from a drug smuggler, making him the first federal judge in the 200-year history of the judiciary to be found guilty of taking a bribe.

While there are a few judges that cause problems [chron.com], the judge isn't the one dragging people to court, the judge isn't the one deciding what laws you broke, the judge isn't the one lying to the court.

The real problem is the prosecutors, who are untouchable and not held to account for their actions when they railroad innocent people and obstruct justice, even when their obstruction allows the guilty to continue killing. They tell the court that their DNA evidence is inc

Hi. I work for a federal judge. My job is writing what are, in essence, draft opinions. I have long substantive conversations with the judge on virtually every opinion we issue. I have a lot of friends who do the same thing. So believe me when I say that if the judge I worked for, of if the judges my friends were working for were being offered bribes, I would definitely know about it. He isn't, and they aren't. Not even close. It just does not happen. Sorry.

And let me add: we are very very good at our jobs. We aren't perfect, and the law often isn't as clear as one would like. But suffice it to say that nine times out of ten, if you aren't a lawyer and you think a decision is crazy or wrong, the more likely explanation is that you just don't know the law that's being applied. It's definitely not bribery and it probably isn't even incompetence (at least, not on the judge's part.) And, having actually read the opinion and knowing something about the law, I can tell you that this case is no different.

So how about this: before wildly casting accusations of bribery around, why don't you take a few minutes to actually read the opinion and then tell us what you think is wrong with it?

So how about this: before wildly casting accusations of bribery around, why don't you take a few minutes to actually read the opinion and then tell us what you think is wrong with it?

That's the problem - the opinion is long and boring, snappy headlines sell.

Anyhow, isoHunt did the Google defense, which the judge ruled invalid as isoHunt was doing "editorial content" and pointing out specific torrents that were to be of interest. This invalidates any DMCA safe harbour because the site is no longer neutral -

Anyhow, isoHunt did the Google defense, which the judge ruled invalid as isoHunt was doing "editorial content" and pointing out specific torrents that were to be of interest. This invalidates any DMCA safe harbour because the site is no longer neutral - the site operators were looking at the site and point out what might be of interest.

DMCA safe harbour only applies when the site treats everything the same.

Were they pointing out blatantly illegal torrents, or only legal and interesting torrents? Or maybe

So believe me when I say that if the judge I worked for, of if the judges my friends were working for were being offered bribes, I would definitely know about it. He isn't, and they aren't. Not even close. It just does not happen. Sorry.

And nobody's saying it does. Read the thread. I believe the originating sentiment is "the law is bought and paid for". That doesn't mean people are bribing judges; it means that people with money can drive the legislative process. The average net worth of first-term congressmen is almost four million dollars [cnbc.com]. "Lobbying" is a 3 billion dollars a year and growing [opensecrets.org] industry. Really, the question isn't "is the law bought and paid for?" it's "how can anyone reasonably expect such a process to generate just laws?".

if you aren't a lawyer and you think a decision is crazy or wrong, the more likely explanation is that you just don't know the law that's being applied.

People who are judging the law aren't doing so on the basis of which laws were infringed, they're doing so on the basis of justice - which, increasingly, does not overlap with the legal technicalities.

I think what you're saying is true for a lot of/.ers, but there are definitely a lot out there who think that judges are taking bribes. This is plain to see whenever any legal decision is discussed here. I don't think it's clear whether the original sentiment I'm responding to had to do with judges or legislators. I don't have much informative to say when it comes to legislators. I think what you've said basically sums it up. But when it comes to judges, on the other hand, I have a perspective that I think

Those mistakes I think any judge has made are due to arbitrary personal bias, not bribes or even systemic bias. The exception might be bias in favor of attorney-defendants, or protecting the system.

Judicial reform appeals to me, but the immediate problem is where do you get "better" judges? You would have to offer more pay and/or a reduced workload, which means an increase in taxes (virtually if not literally impossible). Our current judges reflect our current society, they have merit but also flaws. They c

So believe me when I say that if the judge I worked for, of if the judges my friends were working for were being offered bribes, I would definitely know about it. He isn't, and they aren't. Not even close. It just does not happen. Sorry.

Well, yes. Obviously I cannot claim that it literally never happens. But I can tell you that, in my experience, it doesn't. Since I am in a position to observe a great deal of what goes on in federal litigation (including many very high-stakes cases) I can say with some confidence that corruption is extremely unlikely to be the explanation for the outcome of any given case. You may call this an anecdote and, of course, it is. But it's much more evidence than you (or, I'd wager, virtually any other/.er) hav

Well, the DMCA was a compromise between the interests of ISPs and those of copyright holders -- so, the result of lobbyist dollars. But secondary copyright liability (vicarious or contributory liability for the direct infringement of third parties) is entirely judicially created. There's no statute on the books w/r/t secondary infringement liability. (Federal judges are appointed for life -- they don't campaign, they don't need to run for re-election, I've worked "on the inside" of enough MPAA etc. litigati

There is already regulations regarding credit card fraud, and identity fraud. We don't need specific internet laws to prevent those things. My claim is that anything bad you can do through the Internet you can do outside it and it is already illegal. Nobody needs to control the Internet to deal with those bad things.

Anyway, for everyone asking "why do we let judges rule on / lawmakers govern the Internet" -- the Internet is us. We are the Internet. Just because something occurs over TCP/IP packets instead of in an alley, doesn't make it any less a part of 'the real world,' where real laws apply.

Whose laws? The internet extends world-wide. It doesn't matter what some US court or even SCOTUS decides is "the law" to anyone outside the US. In order to have laws governing the internet you need an international organization to first agree on the regulation, then enforce the law. Simple - and all we need for world peace is for everyone to decide to be nice and stop killing each other.

Why should any single one of us actually respond to a DMCA take down notice after this case, when clearly even if we answer every last take down notice with pulling the data requested offline, we STILL will not be granted safe harbor??

Let's see. The DMCA is meant for websites that have no intent to further copyright infringement, so when they receive a DMCA takedown notice, they can effectively distance themselves from any alleged copyright infringement. And that works just fine.

There are websites whose primary intent is profitting from copyright infringement. They may do other things to appear to have legitimacy. They respond to DMCA takedown notices to (1) appear legitimate, and (2) if they didn't, the copyright holder could crack d

Nah. You are just not smart enough to express what you want and end messing things up, but keep trying and maybe you will get there. Then again, maybe not. Anyway the first step is to admit you do not know how to write. Do it and you will be happily on the way to improvement.

I don't agree with him, or his condescension, but at least he makes a valid point. Unless they're careful, lawyers do think that way (and judges are even more prone to such). It may be unjustified in this case, but it's still a valid point.

You may think so, but that is not the case many times. The Supreme court has been known to overturn itself on many occasions, usually because the First or Second decision was politically motivated. The truth is, judges are seldom impartial, and their interpretation of the law is often biased and distorted. They are not the perfect beings the previous poster wants to depict them as. Despite of his white washing, there is a lot of corruption, political pressures and personal bias in judgments.

It not the job of the judiciary to over turn laws unless the law obviously contradicts the constitution. It is the job of the judiciary to apply the law as it is written.

If the law sucks, or seems to benefit only large corporations that is because your congress/senate passed laws favouring the corporations. The cure is not activist judges, but voting for politicians that will pass laws favouring average citizens instead of corporations.

And it has been this way for millennia. Tens of thousands of years of people persuading, cajoling, bribing and yes forcing others to do something in their favor. Believing anything else is delusion and fantasy.

The people who understand this use it even more to their advantage and gain power. Those who do not are pawns, victims, chattel or scenery.

Personally I choose mostly to be scenery though I wield the advantage when necessary or in a limited venue. The world stage is too risky for anyone without a legac

The geek's explanation for his every failure in law, politics and government is bribery.

As I understand it: The average citizen gets information about issues and candidates from one of the major TV news networks. A news source can refuse to cover a particular issue or a particular candidate's campaign. This means the citizen won't be made aware of it. So if TV news networks fail to cover developments in copyright law or candidates who have expressed interest in a balanced approach to copyright, they can influence the behavior of voters. Now guess what conglomerates own the major TV news sources [pineight.com] and would have a reasonable motive and opportunity to exploit their conflict of interest: the parent companies of five of the six studios that make up the MPAA.

Right. Most people get all their information from a single TV channel, and will never change this TV channel (perhaps their remote is broken?)TV stations freely ignore candidates they don't like, the way FOX never mentions Obama.I'm not sarcastic, I can't help talking this way!

It doesn't matter, the same few people own all the mainstream channels. Some people actually go out of their way to find the truth, but most people will be spoon fed their news by these few people. In the cases their interests conflict you can infer something from the discrepancies between them, but most of the time their interests converge.

Most people get all their information from a single TV channel, and will never change this TV channel

You'd be surprised. In my extended family survey sample, at least one householder sticks to MSNBC because she likes being told what she wants to hear. I've made her fully aware that she treats the issues on which the Democrats and Republicans as a sports rivalry where she roots for the Democrats, and she told me she enjoys it. Besides, even if they do change channels, it's from one channel that doesn't adequately cover developments in copyright law to another channel that doesn't adequately cover developmen

Here it's Slashdot, BBC, Deutsche Welle, Al Jazeerah, ABC, SBS, Sydney Morning Herald, Pravda, South China Post. Sometimes I watch CCTV news as well. Occasionally, I read Pravda in an effort to keep my very rusty Russian language skills from entirely disappearing (okayyyyy... maybe a bit of Soviet nostalgia there, too; so sue me, already, for having grown up in the heyday of the Cold War, and let's get on with it).

I quit bothering very much with CNN or any other US outlet ten years ago... About 5 minutes after I saw how much news *didn't* get reported on the American sites/channels. Which was about 5 minutes after my first evening TV news experience in Australia with ABC, SBS, and BBC.

Shit, last time I was *in* the US, I watched SBS or BBC on my laptop for my news fix. Tried to watch CNN with my Dad, and the cognitive dissonance actually started making my head hurt.

Fortunately, he lives on a lake in Florida; he, his dogs, his fishing boat, and I found lots better things to do most of the time than watching television.:)

Moving away from the US was the smartest damn thing I've ever done in my life--it got me away from the mental poison known as American TV.

Billions of dollars go into 'lobbying' each year, that's not money required to hire the people to express the opinion, that's money funnelled into the political machine directly. With PAC funding, that's pretty much money in the pocket, they can do with PAC money whatever the candidate wants. That money is a bribe in all but name.

The problem here is, the word bribery has lost its meaning because the crime has largely been legitimized.

Geeks make big play about Citizens United, but that just *increased* the bribery by allowing companies to openly bribe politicians.

So yes, bribery it is. Here the copyright holders have a legitimate complaint, but instead they're attacking the third degree from it. Instead of going after the copyright infringement, or the torrent tracker, they're going after a search engine of the torrent trackers. Twice removed from the offense. To drive it through they're conflating the infringement the ISOHunt guy did with the search engine.

Just because hordes of twenty something males at Slashdot, Reddit and similar
sites think they have a fundamental right to download whatever they please
for free, doesn't mean that the US government and courts will turn their
backs on one of this country's major export businesses and sources of
comparative economic advantage.

Just because the US government and courts think they can legislate innovation and technological progress doesn't mean that the slashdot readers who actually innovate and mak

That doesn't codify intellectual property. It merely gives the US Federal Government authorization to create such a thing. The justification for creating such a thing is given as the public good. It is not framed as some sort of new form of property. It is not framed as a virtual land grab.

Copyright is OPTIONAL.

Copyright is not a right.

"Congress shall have the power" versus "the right shall not be infringed".

So, if I don't advertise that I'm dealing crack near school, I should be safe?

I fail to see how your analogy applies. There's a difference between failing to qualify under a safe harbor statute and no safe harbor statute existing in the first place. These providers claim safe harbor under the OCILLA statute for operating an automated search system. The movie studios convinced the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that the safe harbor does not apply to any provider that advertises using the titles of specific works whose copyright owners have not allowed them to be made available

Yea, that's the best. I get all my best links from Chillingeffects.org.Hey, maybe they'll sue chillingeffects.org, that'd be hilarious.Wait... could someone create a torrent aggregator that was entirely based on DMCA take down notices? That way, if sue you could claim the content owners themselves produced the content?

you guys could just skip jump straight to youtube instead of bickering about the dmca results in google search. imho open indexers should be exempt from the dmca laws, it's just a robot listing of what's out there.

here's what to do:1. type "youtube full movies" into google search.2. open first link.3. choose a movie.4. watch.

THE ENTIRE CHAIN INCLUDES ONLY GOOGLE SERVICES AND IT'S GOOGLE DOING THE HOSTING OF THE WHOLE ACTION CHAIN! and youtube advertises as "Share your videos with friends, family, and the wo

The DMCA Safe Harbor provision is what allows sites like Youtube to operate. Since Youtube is a fully automated site in which users upload their own content without approval from Youtube on a case-by-case basis, Youtube does not have full control over the content of their website in real time. Without the Safe Harbor provision, any copyrighted material that appears on Youtube would constitute unwillful copyright infringement by Youtube regardless of who put it there. The Safe Harbor provision shields them from primary and secondary liability.

However, obtaining the benefits of the DMCA cannot be done without also adhering to the requirements of the DMCA and the OCILLA (the legal name for the Safe Harbor provision). Several of the requirements set out by these acts include making a good faith effort to prevent copyrighted content from being uploaded or inducing access to copyrighted content. In short, site operators have to perform at least some level of self-policing in order to obtain protection under OCILLA.

In the case of ISOHunt, it's possible to search by various categories including movies, music, applications, etc... as well as view latest releases by the same categories. A quick look at the top torrents, most recent torrents, top cross indexed torrents, and top searches show that the site operators made no effort to prevent copyrighted content from being made accessible.

The court ruled against them not because they engaged in direct infringement themselves, but because they promoted infringement and profited from that infringement. If they wanted the courts to take them seriously, then they shouldn't have displayed "aXXo" and "jaybob" as the top searches on the front page for years on end, especially when those searches yield infringing results. Of the top 1,000 searches on ISOhunt.com right now all of them are in search of either copyrighted content, or downright illegal content.

Yup. Youtube has a massive number of programs and features, both automated and manual, which are purpose designed to handle copyrighted content. Users are still figuring out novel ways to get around them (such as mirroring a scene from a movie) but Youtube's Copyright handling is the best that I've ever seen and goes way beyond that required by the DMCA

Is it best because a user making a legitimate parody or review is likely to get a strike on their account because the automated ContentID system cannot tell the difference between a straight copy and what ought to be fair use?

Is it best because hateful crazies can get your account closed with a flood of phony copyright complaints?

In short, site operators have to perform at least some level of self-policing in order to obtain protection under OCILLA.

Cite?

It's been a few years since I read the law, but I don't recall any requirements for pro-active policing, only that operators take down allegedly infringing material when presented with a takedown notice, and that they may put it back up if they receive a counter-notice.

The service provider must have a terms of service which includes provisions for account suspension and termination for repeat offenders. Simply having a TOS isn't sufficient, they also have to "reasonably implement" it. This can be found under 17 USC 512(i). The policing doesn't necessarily have to be pro-active, it just needs to be active. If a plaintiff can demonstrate that a service provider's TOS is merely a façade and that the service provider is not living up to their obligations under the OCILLA then that may help their case.

If I recall correctly, something along these lines was used against Megaupload (don't quote me on that, I'm not overly familiar with the case).

Now pretend that it's a judge or DA who's just said this (and perhaps displayed the URLs on a screen in... um... I know, a courtroom!), and that it's not just your kindly old Uncle Zon talking at you over his Sunday morning cuppa.

That's basically what this ruling says. Sure it targets a specific site, but it doesn't differ from the thousands exactly like it and the even bigger number almost like it.

The core issue is that it states that by linking to resources that brings you closer to commit copyright infringement, you enable infringement and thus commit it yourself. All sites on the Internet do this - by choice or by proxy. Nothing is more than a few clicks away from any page so any click might bring you closer to something illegal

> The law can be abused, sure, but so can the internet... and when people need a recourse, what else have they got but the law?

Yet, that wasn't actually a problem for the first few decades. If people didn't like some part of the itnernet, they were free not to go there. Happened all the time on usenet. Somebody says something you don't like? Killfile 'em and that's that. The worst they could do is badmouth you, and nobody was stupid enough to believe slander about somebody posted to usenet, so that made fuck-all difference.

Then, one day, AOL came along, and at first tens of thousands, and then millions of people suddenly complained, "Hey, there are things here we don't like!!!one11!! Somebody should DO something!!" Then the legal system said, "Hey, waydaminnit! We don't have control over this internet thingy - people are doing things without our permission, and we MUST have control over it". And other legal systems agreed, because the internet was insulting their god / way of life / whatever.

And from there on, it's been downhill. The end game is NOT going to be something nice.

Actually it was. The problem was that it wasn't as easily packaged and a lot of it was underground. Back in the day you could easily pirate games, music (and even on a 56kbps modem back then it was faster to download than to rip a CD), and whatnot but you need to be either very good at finding something or needed to know someone. From then on it was typically typing an IP address of an FTP server.

These days the damn things show up as the top results on a google search. The internet became a target when it

If by few you mean 1, then yes. However, black hat hacking was going on by the 1970's. 1988 saw the Morris worm, which is basically the first script kiddie kind of attack, just enough knowledge to be destructive. The Cukoo's Egg details attacks from 1986, and was published in 1989. This was before the deregulation of the internet.

The law is the "alternative solution", SOE for human societies are warlords and demigods. And no "we" were not just fine without the law, wander outside your village and the kings men will kill you, stay inside the village and you will be counted as his property. Really mate, read some history or visit the Congo for fuck's sake because you have no idea what your world would be like without the rule of law.

You seem to confuse the Internet with the physical world. Sorry to pop your bubble, but both things are very different. Anarchy never worked and won't likely ever work in the physical world. It worked very well for a decades in the Internet though.

The analogy of the internet being anarchy space is flawed at best. Sometimes it seems the analogy is usually used by people who want to show us how much better we're now off that law and order broke down on that anarchic space.

The internet of the old times was not an anarchy. It was a collection of tiny dictatorships. Big difference. An anarchy would imply that my limitations of what I could do are set by my personal point of view, my moral values and my decisions. That was not the case. If it was, then mos

No, You don't understand Anarchy at all. Anarchy is not the absence of rules. Anarchy is a system where there is no central planing or government. Nothing prevents private places of having its internal rules in an anarchy.

Anarchy is the absence of EXTERNAL rules, where no superior force governs, with the only "ruler" you have being yourself. In theory one could see the internet as such, if there was no interaction within the unique parts, and as long as every page is only used by its owner, this view holds up.

It breaks down as soon as pages are used by different participants of the internet. Like, say, this board. If it was a truly anarchic place, I could do what I please, as long as my personal, internal rule permits. And w

It is not me who defines it. The difference between public and private is quite well defined. You can opt out from any private network in the same way you can choose not to go to a nightclub or a store. That makes you completely immune to any rule enforced by them. You can't run from the scope of your government though. It can use force and punish you for anything you did it seems unfit no matter where you did it.

Well, yes and no. Mostly no, actually. In the early days the Internet wasn't anarchy. Remember, it was quite literally a network of networks. The organizations (mostly universities) running the individual networks had rules for those networks. The apparent lack of rules comes from the fact that all the involved organizations had very similar rules, not no rules. And, all the involved organizations had very similar goals. That's part of the reason we're where we are today. Basic protocols (DNS, SMTP,

That is the definition of anarchy. You as the other posters seem to think anarchy is the absence of rules. Anarchy is just the absence of central control. There can be private property and private rules in anarchy.

Eternal September was why I changed my stance towards teaching people. I don't let them in my rose garden again.

The internet was our rose garden. We planted, we watered, we grew, we built our little gardens with joy and saw those little tulips and lilacs grow, were proud of them, showed each other what we did and handed over the seeds if someone wanted them. Was no problem either, we knew they'd take them and grow something nice outta them that we could come over and watch, and maybe take a seedling back home if we wanted.

Then came the eternal September people. We thought it's great. More people! More who want to come and grow! More who we could share our knowledge with and in mere months we could accomplish now what we thought would take decades! They saw our gardens and went "wow, cool, we wanna", and we were happy and, let's admit it, folks, kinda proud, too. We all were the geeks back in school, and now some of the cool kids called something we called cool. It was kinda nice, ya know.

Problem was, we let them into our garden, they went for our most wonderful rose bush that we took months to grow and that we were really proud of, grabbed it, uprooted it and took it with them because they wanted to have it in their garden. And that, let's face it, was not cool. I mean, we would have handed him a sprout, for free of course (even though we soon noticed we won't get anything back, but hey, call it development aid), but just going and taking away what we worked on was simply not cool, ok? So what did we do? The usual, of course, when nightfall came we went over their fence (provided they had one in the first place, most had no idea how to build one and didn't bother to ask), got our rose bush back and just for good measure we rearranged his seasoning herb field. Nondestructive, but it should send a message, don't mess with us, or we'll go out and pull a prank on you. We know more about gardening than you may ever think you could know, so play nice, sonny.

Did he heed the message? No, he cried bloody murder how we "violated" him and how he was defenseless against such bullying, and how the park rangers should finally come in here and make sure he's safe from us hooligans. We were kinda flabbergasted, ya know? Hey, buddy, dunno if you noticed it, but we were here first. YOU come to US, and now you cry for rules that limit us? Aside of this being anathema, you should... uh... hello officer? Yes? You don't say... really?

This is also where that alleged "anarchy" of the internet came in and this is where people started crying for laws because of "us bullies". Well, the history of the US ain't much different, when the settlers cried for the cavalry because the Indians wanted their land back...

But we were still kinda happy. Well, we now had to put camo nets over some of our gardens so the park sheriffs don't see them, but we arranged with it. We just made the next big mistake when we told the masses what we grew there and that they should be allowed to enjoy it as well. Big mistake. Suddenly everyone started growing and of course companies who live off selling you those herbs didn't enjoy that one bit. They didn't really mind us few doing it, but now that it had arrived with the masses, they noticed a big dip in their sales and that's when they started to send the sheriffs after us.

A little later they noticed how they could make even more money by not destroying our gardens but taking them over. They came into our garden, and again, some of us even welcomed them. I mean, it was kinda more convenient to buy your seeds in here instead of having to go out of it into the real world to get them. That soon changed when we noticed how they often used to steal our bushes and we couldn't even get it back because it suddenly belonged to them too. Again, we were taken aback but it only went downhill from there. We were evicted, we were bullied to the corner and we stood there, fists clenched in range but we could not fight back.

When I have to choose between some 12 year old kid "abusing" the internet and some corporations abusing the law, the choice is obvious, at least to me. I base that choice on the damage either of them can do.

Assuming you are not a troll, but merely have not bothered to think before writing, allow me to provoke you to exercise your grey matter.

If a group plan a bank robbery via Skype, would you say "Hands off our internet"? If someone blows up a building full of innocents by transmitting a code to an explosive device through a connection over the Internet, should that action be ignored because "We need a free Internet"?

The Internet is simply a communications medium. Like any other, it can be used to commit actual crimes. The problem here is not the state being able to govern acts committed using the Internet. The problem is the unjust copyright laws that outlaw what is no crime at all, and is in fact a boon to mankind: the mere copying of harmless and useful information, whether over the Internet or otherwise.

In the same way a person using a phone can order someone to blow a building it can do through the internet. It is not motive to regulate and monitor phone calls neither to regulate the internet though. Many times the harm you do trying to prevent something is orders of magnitude worse than the thing you are trying to prevent. That is true regarding the "War against terrorism" and also regarding the attempts of Internet regulation.

If you were using the phone though in your store to take orders for copyrighted DVDs you *would* be liable. LONG before the 'war on terrorism' or any other strawman you want to throw out there.

There is no question ISO Hunt is guilty either under the law. Google might have copyrighted material indexed but it's not a category in Google like it is on some of Fung's sites. The lawsuit points out that "Warez" is even in his meta tags for the website. It's a piracy site, pure and simple. Whether we agree or d

Citizens of this country had a right to perform music in private for their friends regardless of who owned the copyright. Private does matter.

The problem is the internet is not really private anymore. And people are using it like a bullhorn in public. This is the root of the issue. It's going to be super bad when it is turned into "public utilities" but the backbones and original phone companies are classified as such anyway.

So all that shit is "public". And not in private. Question is, with the internet, i

The 9th Circuit is a joke. It is the most overturned circuit in the country

Citation needed that a significantly larger percentage of the Ninth Circuit's decisions are overturned than those of other circuits. The fact is that the population of the Ninth Circuit is larger; therefore more cases will be brought. If more cases are decided, and the same percentage of them are overturned, a greater number of decisions will be overturned.

The Supreme Court reversed or vacated 19 of the 26 decisions it looked at from the 9th Circuit this judicial term,

73%? Gracious...
But later in the article:

The Supreme Court typically reverses about 75% of the cases it reviews each year, having selected them because they raise important questions of law or to resolve the internal contradictions created when circuits come to different conclusions about the same legal question.

There is no need. They profit by providing convenience (assuming they make more than the cost to host). Anyone can post a torrent and then send a link out or post it somewhere. Just subvert Twitter or Pintrest or any number of social systems that let you follow someone.